Apple Cider

I have never, ever considered Weird Twitter to be that progressive. As far as Left? I definitely think there's the left we think of politically (liberals) and then Leftists (radicals that are usually socialist or Marxist, some flavor of that). The schisms happening there are usually camps that fall along those lines when it comes to talking about things like feminism/social justice.

*pulls you up by the collar* EVERY MAN WILL DISAPPOINT YOU, TWIG

Instead of baking the potato, peel them, stick them in some boiling water, wait until fork tender, then mash up with some milk, butter, salt, pepper (or some garlic! or cheese!) and then eat.

Probably because a lot of them are not the demographic that "fits" Twitter user types. A lot of different populations use Twitter but the only ubiquitous social media to anyone is probably Facebook. When I was attempting to get police to investigate my stalker and for the court to issue me a restraining order, they had no idea (in 2012) what Twitter was, only that it was something "like Facebook." It's just not a priority when threats are considered to only be actionable if they are via people in your vicinity, etc. Cybercrime is incredibly hard to pin down, investigate or arrest for, unless you are a big company, but those big companies tend to also be in places that have cops with cybercrime units. It is a lot of things at once.

I wonder if at this point most of Dan Rykert's persona is seeming so affably sheltered that he can troll people about stuff he's supposedly never had, but has.

You guys are talking about something I literally talked about yesterday on Twitter regarding things like exclamation points and disparagement of like.

Ah yes, the difficulties of having a gay relative versus actually being the gay relative yourself. (You're not being unreasonable.)

I think confronting challenging material is good which is why I wouldn't ever want them on a syllabus. But it's like yeah, the discussion never seems to swing in the middle of places where it IS good and where it isn't, but rather "eh, all of it is shitty and terrible, and trigger warnings should be gone" versus a more expansive understanding of why they are needed in the first place. There's definitely content which we (general) should be exposed to but might pose significant problems to people who are affected.

I am not of the opinion that trigger warnings are amazing OR useless because overall, I believe content warnings are incredibly useful. Not sure how I feel about them being on college syllabi, and I think that that is an extension of people not actually understanding the difference between trigger warnings and content warnings. I can't outright dismiss trigger warnings because I myself know what it's like to run into something in media I wasn't prepared for and be completely fucking floored emotionally for a couple of days. Let me tell you, controlled clinical spaces for immersion or interaction therapy is FAR different than being alone and having something sprung on you because you are not prepared for it, it completely sends you down a fucking rabbit hole and it often times makes you relive a really horrible experience in your life. Hence why I tend to read synopses online or are grateful for websites that give heads-up of what a movie or book or show might contain. People didn't warn me about Black Mirror, for instance, despite the first season dealing explicitly with sexual coercion. On the other hand, I've had shit with public transportation lay me out flat. I think the more nuanced approach to this is understanding trauma overall a lot better, and making more judicious use of content warnings. I like people making good use of tagging, because it allows me tools where I myself can decide what I choose to interact with in general - I filter out certain words on Twitter, Tumblr because it bothers me or otherwise causes me to feel like crap, etc. Giving people the ability to make choices is honestly a good goal in general. I mean, marking things with spoiler tags or "NSFW" are no different than "trigger warning" other than what they contextually imply and yet people are way more concerned about spoilers than trigger warnings because trigger warnings have been bludgeoned to death as "cossetting liberal bullshit" or feminist propaganda. I know that in many circumstances that they aren't useful but that doesn't mean they aren't useful in ALL places.

I think that there's a lot of cases where social justice language is used in a way that is removed from the ultimate contexts and power dynamics they are referring to (see example of "mansplaining" being used to talk about a man speaking to another man, I wholly believe mansplaining is relegated to a man talking to a woman that implies that power dynamic). I cannot say myself (I'm white) if your reaction is somehow "more right" than your friends in this case, but it sounds analogous to a situation I see a lot with men chastising women on internalized misogyny - even if you disagree and you know why you disagree and you know that internalized misogyny is a thing, is it your place, as someone who benefits from sexism to necessarily check that vs. other women? That's a nuanced scenario I'm describing but it sometimes rankles me personally to see men do it because they still aren't removed from the system that creates that in the first place, and often, even monologues that are born from internalized misogyny are still subject to the power dynamics of whatever conversation takes place afterwards. But all of this is probably what people grouse about "absolute identity politics" when really, in practise, it's not something you think about overtly as much. It's not my place, I believe, to tell people of color what they should think about racism as a structural institution is because I benefit from that structure existing - it would be more of the case of other peers of theirs in that regard, to check their POV.

Maybe it's because I took a lot of speaking classes in college but most of the time, rhetorical speech is often for the huge audiences who hear what you say, versus trying to persuade your opponent. Here's the two possible futures of Penny Arcade - either they apologized, rectified the situation and became better people, or they didn't. In this case, it looks like they didn't change or at the very least, they became more known to people as kinda terrible all along, but it raised the tide for me on what kind of stuff gets talked about. I know that inspecting what individuals do or say, especially with a huge platform, isn't often going to do much but you hope for the best and prepare for the worst. It is often the worst. But as people have even said in this thread, it turned the tide for them personally, I see that as a net benefit. I believe that discourse is the first step in many radical changes, combined with praxis in general. There's absolutely been cases where someone notable said something messed up and when they were approached about it, recognized what they did and moved forward, and that's always cool to see. I don't think call out culture is perfect, I definitely think it is a neutral tool in the hands of many people and that's what gives it magic or power (for good or ill, or whatever). I also don't know if I see it as a codified culture so much as a device.

The Penny Arcade thing was absolutely useful because I thought it blew a lid on how we see geek culture in general, honestly. For the first time, to me, it felt like we started to take a really nuanced look at what women have been dealing with in nerd culture (one of the reasons I stopped being friends with mostly guys was rape jokes, incidentally) for a long time and no one wanted to talk about. The fact that it was two dudes who reach a ton of people and promote that sort of thing and showed true faces on that matter was a big deal, to me. They might not be important to you, but they were or are important to a lot of people and what they say matters in that regard. They also stopped being people I wanted to not support financially or otherwise. I don't have much to say about Hanna Rosin or the UVA rape case because I didn't get to keep up on it. I guess to me, letting things pass without comment is what keeps them in effect.

I have to agree with Deadpan on this one, particularly as someone who spends a lot of time in places where this is a problem sometimes but has overall made me into a more thoughtful person. see: my issue with Tumblr

Okay, I WILL vent my spleen about this. As someone who is privy to way more of the details of how this all occurred and saw it unfolding in real time, the absolutely BATSHIT conspiracy theories and self-aggrandizing propaganda coming out of this from Gamer goobers is hilarious. They have no actual idea that corporations are frequently all about money, or lack of effort, and this potential closure speaks to that, but somehow it's AOL taking a stand on having Joystiq write one piece about racism and SUDDENLY it is a victory for GG? Wow, keep hitting that drum, you weirdos. I saw similar theories and actually really cold-blooded stuff from people who have been angry at my boyfriend's site for a very long time and that was also similarly bizarre, cockamamie theories being spoken about as if true. People are generally just horrible. You pick a day where people are potentially being laid off last minute to air grievances about a feature that ran like 3 years ago? Wow, get over yourself.

I think there's a hardening of discourse even talking about...talking about this stuff - self-segregating into self-reflecting chambers is also in some ways an individual's choice. There's a wide belief that social media absolutely should be a free forum of ideas, no matter how hurtful or even harmful those ideas are (dehumanizing would be a good word for this) versus a person's private or semi-public forum or even just social circle. We have to spend time with people who share no interests and actively hate or think of us as less human regularly because we are obligated to (work, school, family) but social media is perhaps a place where many people are given the ability to voice concerns or share ideas with similar people without any moderation. This is something I brought up in the social media thread because it destabilizes current power paradigms for marginalized populations. For example: I got a lot of flak back when I used to talk about the intersection of feminism and World of Warcraft, and when I ended up having to block or otherwise unfollow people who were extremely mad that I didn't want to have the same argument again about how I am allowed to criticize WoW, I got the same "you're just enforcing an echo chamber!" comment. There's levels of difference in opinion and then there's also the lack of obligation to needing to hear everyone's say on topics in my Twitter mentions - especially if these people are coming it to hostile-y, aggressively in the first place because they don't even think I should be able to criticize. I don't think this DOESN'T happen. I actually don't disagree that many of the issues we're all talking about DO happen but I feel like it is being formalized by people who seek to undermine vs. ameliorate.

Mangela: Huzzah! Hope you go to the book reading! Twig: YAY! Go on a date! Go you!

I apologize because I think it's a basic human decency to say. There hasn't been a time that I can recall, anecdotally where I said something that someone felt hurt by that I felt no remorse about. Most of the time, it's been me really not considering what I said and passing over someone's feelings or generally stepping in where it wasn't my business to. Every single time, I've recognized what my mistake was, apologized sincerely, rectified the situation and thoroughly considered what I need to do going forward to make sure that isn't duplicated. I've become overall a pretty thoughtful person who thinks quite a bit about what they say and often chooses to listen in situations where my opinion isn't really warranted. I don't see this as a bad thing. I'm also a person who feels fairly liberated in some ways, by the politics I espouse - dealing with sexism becomes more pervasive when you start to recognize what it is but it also gave me relief because I finally had a name for many of the things I have experienced over my lifetime but had no idea was something common. Same goes for dealing with other oppressive behaviors. I don't get bent out of shape about every instance of it and therapy helped a lot for some of the really brutal stuff I've dealt with over my lifetime but I can empathize with people who come into this stuff hot and angry and raw, I was like that myself a few years ago. Confronting this stuff and realizing that the world is inherently unfair is not easy for anyone. There's also some topics I tend to get a lot more upset about than others - while it's easier to talk in a less emotional way about things like biphobia, I absolutely get my dander up when people consistently are belligerent about things like rape culture, etc.

Well I got to the graf about how trigger warnings don't work and I just gave up, too. This guy is literally not having anything that's even remotely "PC" or "liberal" and it shows. What's funny is most of the feminists I know are not even liberals - and liberal feminism is fairly eschewed among a lot of us who are radical leftists. But it always comes back to how angry and combative we are and shit. And yes, I know that there's a lot of bullshit drama/call-out beefing because a lot of people come into feminism being justifiably angry and boundary defining but I don't need a guy ranting on a national publication to dictate that.

All of this stuff is a great intra-community topic to hash out but I always see these critiques coming from on high from people who have typically profited from or having no personal stake in it, and it always, always comes off as "oh those toxic feminists, those thought/language police, those PC troopers, etc" and I want nothing to do with it.

http://www.joystiq.com/2015/01/27/joystiq-closing-shop/ I can't say much about this myself since I date someone affected by this but I have to appreciate the gallows humor all the same.

Well you have bisexual solidarity here. The real intersections between bisexuality/queerness and misogyny are kinda scary in that bisexual women have particularly high incidences of being abuse and rape survivors, particularly from intimate partners. But bisexual people in general, including men suffer a ton from invisibility, being considered a "pass-through" point on a sexuality spectrum (which, I mean, some people do come out as bi before being gay but that's because of heteropatriarchal norms, it's not our fault) and a lot of other things. Then there's a lot of other really gross intra-community issues like cis lesbians who believe bi women are "tainted" by interaction with penises (which is also hugely transphobic), think we're going to cheat on them with a dude, etc. It's hard sometimes.

Don't we all deserve a little shameless buttplugging. Edit: A+ top of the page post, good job, I'd like to thank the Academy

Also, good read from today: http://www.ravishly.com/2015/01/26/your-guide-non-oppressive-bdsm Soha is one of my favorite writers and she just started writing at Ravishly! She tackles a lot of BDSM and adjacent topics in her work and games and this was a great read and honestly I feel extends far beyond JUST bdsm relationships.

It was a specific parenthetical but honestly, the fact that I was listed as looking for friends only and NOT threesomes, open marriages, poly relationships that people should take what I said at face value but don't because my sexuality and gender combination is taken as being openly available for all of those things regardless. It has literally nothing specifically to do with JUST poly couples as I have said over and over, it's just that in the mix of people who have completely disregarded my profile, those were some of them. Despite not listing myself as open to anything BUT looking for friends, I am trying to remember that I even specified I was in a long-term relationship and was happy with that and that didn't deter people from asking. I even explicitly stated that I have NO problems with poly couples or relationships or the lifestyle specifically and I even empathize with you but apparently I did not make myself abundantly clear about what I took offense to (which again, was not even specific to poly couples. Again.)

The line of inquiry was better suited for a more general take here, I felt. However, if you permit me to be blunt, I do felt like you were not recognizing my point as valid and instead being incredibly snide to me for daring to be set as "looking for friends" on a site and personally noting anecdotes from many kinds of couples (mostly messaged by the male partner of them, though) that disregarded this setting. Granted, by the end of it, you were not the only person implying how confusing it is, but you definitely seemed to take my noting of pretty unvarnished facts as somehow a broad indictment of all poly couples with men in them, which is wasn't. It was me despairing that many people see bisexual women, regardless of their actual wishes, as sexually available particularly for threesomes. If this was not the case and I misread what you wrote, then I do apologize, but your tone read that way to me. However, I mostly am just interested in hashing out a more general pattern of behavior over here that stemmed from the conversation.